AnAngryAlpaca

Because the people or companies they report on still use the platform :(

They can use your wifi signal as a beacon by triangulating the signal strength from at least 3 different points. Then they can figure out in which departments you spend the most time, how long you spend in store, heatmaps, which aisles you skip and generic info like what time you visit, which locations you also shop at.

A quick google for "Retail Wifi tracking" brings up mirame.net , where you can see some of the features.

I would suggest to set your phone to flight mode if you see a "free wifi" sign in your shopping mall.

The ea fifa sports of consumer electronics.

Would that really help? I remember that each brand had their own custom battery sizes, and it would only sell the remaining stock once the phone was no longer on the store shelf. I only know Nokia had some standard form factor for batteries.

For me Gmail's killer feature is the spam Blocker. Other email services never get it right, and block to much or to little...

The default Microsoft mail client I use at work is slower and has less features than the BBS email I used 30 years ago...

If you get your own Webspace it comes with email.

How else would you play 30 minutes of your own music in a car?

Well yeah, and his response was "sorry sir, but without an account we cannot serve customers..."

My favorite barber was booked out recently, so I just walked into the next one across the road, which looked new and had no customers inside. Asked for the haircut, and he said sure, what's your name and email address? I was confused and asked why he would need that, and he said it's for his app to book appointments and charge customers.

I walked out without getting a haircut.

The previous satellite internet was more expensive, had much higher ping times and lower transfer Speeds because the satellites where fewer and further away from earth. This mean more people had to share a lower bandwidth. You could use email and some text heavy websites, but bloated news sites with Autoplay ads, video calls or online games not so much...

It's just a "Save picture as..." with extra steps, and money!